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Thursday, September 15, 2016

'Blair Witch' (2016) Movie Review

Without breaking any new ground, You’re Next brought a freshness and crackling energy to the well-worn realm
of home invasion horror. The Guest similarly infused the
mysterious-stranger-comes-to-town narrative with a verve and life it hasn’t had
in years (it also made my Top 25 Movies of the 21st Century So Far list). So to
see a movie as uninspired and derivative, as pointless and unnecessary as
Blair Witch from a filmmaking team as exciting as Adam
Wingard and Simon Barrett, is disappointing to say the least.

Admittedly, I’ve never been a fan of The Blair
Witch Project. I didn’t get the hype in 1999, and the film hasn’t won
me over in the intervening years. That said, I understand the impact it had—and
still has—why people reacted to it with such vehemence, and I appreciate that
the filmmakers attempted something innovative and different. But at this stage,
after 17 years and countless imitations, Blair Witch plays
tired and hackneyed, as not only a rehashed retread of the original, but of the
thousands of found footage knockoffs it inspired.

Beat for beat, Blair Witch is almost
identical to its predecessor. The plot unfolds in predictable fashion, the jump
scares happen as if they’re attractions on a roadmap, and the spooky sounds in
the woods are generic horror movie spooky woods sounds.

Blair Witch is almost identical, except
for the polished gloss and total lack of risk. Playing the formula so perfectly
just means playing it completely safe. Populated by too pretty people,
intrusive cinematic flourishes, and contrivances to explain why these people
keep filming, it loses the gritty, no-budget edge and raw, improvisational feel
that made unsuspecting audiences believe the first film was real. For all of
its faults, The Blair Witch Project was anti-establishment,
anarchic, and free, not hemmed in and stale; unexpected and authentic, not overly
staged and sanitized.

This isn’t to say that Blair Witch isn’t
entirely without value. Despite being good looking in an unrealistic movie
way—the everyman/woman feel is part of what grounds the original—character
development gets a substantial upgrade.

It’s years later and the disappearance of his sister—Heather
from The Blair Witch Project—in the Maryland woods still
haunts James (James Allen McCune, The Walking Dead). With
his filmmaker friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez, Alien:
Covenant), and couple Ashley (Corbin Reid,
Kingdom) and Peter (Brandon Scott, Wreck-It Ralph), in tow, James heads back to Burkittsville to meet local
hillbillies Lane (Wes Robinson, Roadies) and Talia (Valorie
Curry, The Following), who discovered new footage that may
show Heather.

This all goes down in obvious, predictable fashion, but the
characters have a personable chemistry. And enough questions hang over Lane and
Talia’s motivations to make things moderately compelling. Are they on the level
or just fucking with the protagonists; are supernatural forces actually afoot,
or are two locals just having a laugh?

Once the ill-fated crew finally finds their way to woods,
Adam Wingard plays up the claustrophobia of being hemmed in on all sides, the
menace of empty darkness, and the tension of not knowing what’s out there.
Momentarily effective and affecting, though it hits all the formulaic spots, Blair
Witch lacks the urgency that makes the found footage approach so
present and pressing when well executed—there’s not a single scene that even
holds a candle to the tent sequence in Bobcat Goldthwait’s sasquatch found
footage Willow Creek. The momentum frequently drops, and,
frankly, large stretches become boring as hell—not good for an 89-minute movie.

Blair Witch offers a few brief attempts
to expand on the greater mythology, though the script confines these snippets
to the early stages, casting them aside by the time the characters get to the
heart of the woods. To be honest, it’s also easy to forget why James goes out
there to begin with—his motives are propped up early only to be largely ignored
later.

One potentially interesting element, one that’s actually
new, introduces a pseudo time warp. The manipulation of time pops up a few
times throughout and provides minor insight into the Blair Witch, the
disappearance of Heather and her compatriots years ago, and why no sign was
ever found. Unfortunately, this functions primarily as a plot convenience,
never goes anywhere, and winds up nothing but a moderately intriguing shrug, a
what-could-have-been.

As with its predecessor, the real strength of Blair
Witch lies in the final act. The pace picks up, the tension
amplifies, and the movie moves along at a nice clip. Granted, most of the
visuals are incomprehensible blurs as the characters sprint through dark woods
with handheld cameras, screams and labored breathing superimposed over the top
of the jittery footage, but at least its motion and velocity.

Ultimately, however, even at the high point, the things that
work remain too familiar to make Blair Witch anything
special. Which is a shame. Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett have such a fantastic
track record of taking common household horror scenarios and infusing them with
renewed crispness and vigor, but they miss the opportunity here. Maybe we’ve
reached the point where there’s literally nothing new with found footage.

The exact movie the title promises, how much mileage you get
out of Blair Witch depends largely on your feelings toward
the original. (The less said about Book of Shadows: Blair Witch
2, the better—though according to Barrett, it’s officially not canon,
as it involves none of the original creative team, so we can go back to
ignoring its existence.)

When Lionsgate revealed the title ruse—the film originally
went under the working title The Woods—my first questions
were why does this need to happen and what does it bring to the table? Extant fans
may well find elements to cling to, but in general, Blair
Witch didn’t need to happen, it doesn’t add anything to the formula,
and it lacks the visceral kick and rebellious edge that so fascinated people
about The Blair Witch Project. [Grade:
C-]